>Mike Farris scribeva:
>Ooooohh my, I find myself getting cross with this thread, settle down and
>count
>to ten
>
>raamin, toklin, tociinan, sitaakin, cahkiipan, ipaakin, kolapaakin,
>tosnapaakin,
>ostapaakin, pokoolin
>
>hmm I feel a little better. I hestitate to get involved here (since I think
>everyone involved is wrong in some way or another) but I'll give it a shot.
>
>First, "free word order" does not seem to exist in *any* natural language.
>That
>is, no language just throws words around with no restrictions. Word order i=
n
>natural languages (in the way we're talking about them here) fall into thre=
e
>broad categories. That is most languages in the world fall into one of thes=
e
>three categories, there are some left over and some I'm not sure about
>(especially verb initial languages)
>
>1) Languages that use word order to distinguish between arguments (subject,
>object). English, Thai, Chinese, French, Yoruba etc.. Languages that
>distinguish
>subject and object through word order are almost all SVO (subject, verb,
>object)
>in that order, although some allow "fronting" to hilight the object (OSV)
>with or
>without (depending on the language) other changes in the sentence.
>
>2) Verb final languages such as Turkish, Japanese, almost all languages of =
the
>Indian sub-continent, many Amerindian languages etc. The only firm word ord=
er
>rule of these languages is that the last element in the clause is a verb.
>Usually
>the subject precedes the object (SOV). Just how much freedom there is in wo=
rd
>order (apart from keeping the verb last) varies from language to language.
>Some
>allow other elements to follow the verb (especially in "Oh yeah~and X"
>contexts,
>ekzemple Mi hundon vidis, hierau.) and others avoid this.
>
>3) Languages in which word order does not indicate subject and object but
>which
>*does* indicate what information is new, what information is old, what is
>especially important etc.
>Polish, Aymara, Hungarian, Greek, German (to some extent) and some others g=
o
>here. In Polish, if a sentence presents entirely new information, it's most
>likely to be SVO (subject to other restrictions that need not concern us
>here).
>Other than that, the general rule is older(given) information first and new
>information last. In Aymara, if you ask someone how would you say "X" the
>answer
>will usually be in SOV form, although in spoken Aymara there is a (slight)
>tendency for verb final sentences, it also tends to follow a "This is what =
I'm
>talking about" "This is what I'm saying about it" frame.
>
>Second, there is no iron-clad correlation between case endings and word
>order, in
>other words, having case endings doesn't guarantee free word order.
>Finnish has
>16 or 17 (I forget exactly) cases and pretty consistent SVO word order.
>Spanish
>has *no* cases (for nouns that is, pronouns have three) and no specific
>preference for word order ( it's sort of SVO but lots of exceptions.)
Il ha essite multe discussion concernente le casos in finno. Il ha illes
qui allega que le "casos" salvo le infinitivo/accusativo e forsan etiam le
partitivo es casos durante que le altere suffixos plus tosto es a comparar
con prepositiones.
>For the record, I'll repeat that *no* natural language that I know of has j=
ust
>two cases for nouns, nominative and accusative (for reasons I think I can
>explain, but it would take awhile) and all of the languages that do have an
>explicit "Accusative" case that I know of, sometimes don't use it, sometime=
s
>there's a meaning shift and other times not.
Nota etiam le uso del accusativo pro entes vivente in polonese, que etiam
se extende a phantomas e marcas de automobiles! Isto pote esser un caution
al novialistas qui voleva distinger inter tertie pronomine pro cosas
abstracte e concrete! Multo periculose quando le usatores in le strata
comencia usar le idioma!
>
>But hey (I'm feeling kind of tolerant today) there are many examples from
>natural
>languages of a feature disappearing or appearing sporadically in spontaneou=
s
>speech to the horror of purists. The vocative case in Polish is an
>example, most
>Poles use the vocative marginally or not at all. You'd *never* know this fr=
om
>reading Polish books or listening to TV since editors stubbornly add in the
>"missing" vocatives to anything printed or official. Since Esperantists are
>almost *all* linguistic purists (and therefore not very reflective of what
>Eo hen
>would be like if average people started learning/using it) this is seen by
>them
>as speakers "forgetting" or "making mistakes" instead of a kind of natural
>evolution.
Si, le "He is bigger than me" que ha su correspondentes in svedese "Han =E4r
st=F6rre =E4n mig" per le qual le puristas sempre terrorisa le populo.
Comenciante apprender polonese io videva unquam un afficho a un mur con le
inwocation al femina polonese: Kobieto! Mi amicos polonese me diceva que
isto es multo obsolete, que nulle persona parla assi etc.
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Kjell Rehnstroem
Vaenortsgatan 87
S-752 64 UPPSALA
Svedia - Sweden